Thursday, November 10, 2005

American Pragmatism?

Americans are obsessed with how "pragmatic" they are. How easy everything is. And how difficult and complicated every other place in the world is.

But in my opinion, there are certain things in America that seem to have been designed by the most confused minds on earth.

People have ten fingers; ten toes. So, they like the decimal system. They usually rate things on a scale of 10. Alas, not all people. Americans are still obsessed with amazingly arbitrary units. Twelve inches make a foot. The person who dreamed that up probably had twelve fingers. And then, there's a yard. The only entities that they seem to rate on a scale of ten is their women.

While we're talking about units, certainly, the farenheit scale comes to mind. Water freezes at 32F. Boils at 212F. Why? It seems like Farenheit just selected a scale while blindfolded. And America follows it like rats follow the pied piper. People who use to Celcius scale are looked at the way worms are looked at. (i.e. frowned upon)

We just won't talk of ounces, fluid ounces, cups, british thermal units. But let's talk about horse power. Did the person who came up with this term think that all horses are identical? I mean, sure, food in all Subways and McDonaldses taste identical everywhere ..... standardization .... but do all horses have the same power? Come on!

Now. Foot ball. I really haven't seen anyone kick a ball in that game till now. All they do is bash each other up silly. Should it not be called wrestling instead? But no, wrestling in America is all about skimpily clad women introducing ghastly individuals who fake pain and insult each other (as well as the spectator's intellegence) on the stage. It's more of a soap opera than "wrestling".

And what about calculating CGPA on a scale of 4? Why 4? Why now pi or e, while we're at it, making things as complex as possible? Wonder why America is still so much at the "cutting edge" of technology. Wonder why the rest of the world lags behing so much. I mean, with so much inherent obfuscation here, shouldn't there be lots of accidents? But yet, this is the only nation that sends rockets to Mars.

The Americans think they are "pragmatic" when they are actually more confused than, say, the Indians or the Russians or the Chinese or the Japanese.

We don't care about the Britishers any way. They are more or less another state in the USA, as are the Canadians. The French are busy burning their country up, and the Germans are busy doing something absolutely trivial the roundabout way with utter precision and elegance. And there's almost no Australians around in this world.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------This post is not to be interpreted as racism. It's just humour. I'm just trying to vent my frustration, having looked at inches, feet and BTUs while grading the Thermodynamics course here at A&M. I respect Americans, Germans and Britishers. I haven't seen any Australian yet. I'm not sure they exist. So, I'll probably respect them once I confirm their existence. I think there's just Kangaroos down there.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------